Celestial's Half-hours

by Celestial

Worldshaping for Fillies [Slice of Life]

Sometimes, it's just something that you have to safeguard the harmony and peace of the whole of Equestria. Sometimes, it's just something that you do for some sort of forbidden fun. Manipulating forces behind even a mortal unicorn's comprehension turns quickly from being grand to a mediocre routine, and all that's left is violating a few rules.

Even if you're the one making the rules.

It all began in a droll afternoon about 1530 years ago (my memory seems faulty on the exact year, pardon me), right after the Summer Sun had been dealt with. One of those impossibly boring afternoons that a filly (a centenary alicorn would still count as one, for many purposes) would find absolutely intolerable. So, in an act of desperation, I decided to sneak into our Royal Dad's secret chambers, being granted passage easily from the stationed guards, still quite new at their job.

I had all the seriousness and resolve tempered from boredom, and they only had a few months of training, the first ever in fact. They knew better after that than to leave me near papa's stuff.

Inside, among the piles of all the odd-looking, priceless, most dangerous, and shiniest trinkets, one caught my attention in particular: a set of mirrors, 3 of them, placed at the edges of a triangle.

What I encountered on the other side of one was dampness. Darkness. A sense of restraint, dread, and an horrible stench of manure, rot, and any other number of hygiene violations that Galaxy would have me scrubbed under several royal baths just by having THOUGHT of them.

Before I could veer back to where I came, though, I heard whimpers.

They were coming from a corner of the dark stony room I was in, where two strange creatures were huddled, one big and one small, but most alike.

They looked most curious, for while their sprawled legs were goatlike, their barrel was quite broader than a horse's, and ended in two muscular forelegs with five stubby appendages, and a bull's head.

The little one was whimpering in the bigger one's arms, crying out soft, inaudible, distant words. The bigger one heard me, and raised her declined head to look at me in shock. It mouthed tentative, trembling, frightened words in a strange tongue I couldn't comprehend.

"I-I-I'm sorry, but-" I was cut off by the bigger creature standing upright, leaving the child be, and taking slow steps in my direction. With each pace it grew more confident in expressing its gibberish. It yearned to talk to me and in spite of its misery; I felt its hope that we would somehow manage to communicate.

"I-I don't understand-" I stammered, backing slowly towards to the faintly glowing portal embedded in one of the room's walls, its gentle light warmly awaiting me.

The creature continued her approach, but alas I could stand no more and I opted to flee in panic, to the safety of the other side of the portal, back to Father's room.

I landed in haste on the floor, trembling and with ragged breaths. Few seconds passed, my younger self trying to gather her wits again, when something massive crossed the portal and landed on top of me! In panic, I stumbled them off me to realize it was them two, huddling one another on the marble floor, both taking in the alien surroundings with disbelief and utter awe.

"Just what is going on here?" Stellar's voice thundered from the corridor even before he crossed the doorway.

-----------

"I knew I was in trouble then," Celestia finishes reminiscing as she sips the last drops of her tea cup, and places it gently on the arabesque table, nostalgia crossing her expression.

"So what happened then?"

"You mean besides my punishment?" She chuckles softly. "It turned out the two were mother and son, of a race enslaved by another for the sole purpose of protecting their labyrinths, bastions where their most prized possessions were hidden away in safety.”

"Weird."

"Very. For how lost and out of place they were, my father was compassionate to them, and generously let them stay and learn our language, eventually arranging for the survival and future prosperity of their race.

She took a long breath, and stretched herself on the large royal sofa.

"And that," she finished, "is the story of how minoutaurs came to be in Equestria."

Author's Note:

Prompt #391: The Minotaurs are coming.